As I get more settled in here in Mendoza, with 2 weeks down at The Vines of Mendoza and an apartment of my own now, my focus - and that of this blog - turns back to vino. It’s about time, no?

Every Wednesday at The Vines we have a blind tasting to choose wines for our tasting room, and for sale online in our store and wine club. This week was my first; not only was it fascinating, but I’ve since been engaged in several conversations about the idea of blind tasting, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on here.

A blind tasting, quite simply, means that you’re tasting wine without knowing what it is. Usually the bottles are covered in aluminum foil or concealed in paper bags (classy, right?) - there aren’t really any blindfolds or closed eyes involved. That would be a hell of a lot of fun but also probably pretty messy. In this case the wines are poured before we even sit down and the bottles put away.

This kind of tasting can be for mere entertainment, or to test your palate - to be humbled (and occasionally encouraged) by your knowledge of wine when the label is taken out of the picture. Where is the wine from? What grape(s) are in it? How much does it cost - or how much should it cost? Do you like it, without the power of marketing and a pretty label?

It is always surprising what the results are when a group of people gathers to sample wine without any knowledge of what it is, even more so when they are all wine professionals with strong opinions about vino. I’ve tasted with some extraordinary palates, but my experience is that nobody’s perfect, although some people truly do have more naturally sensitive taste buds than others. Really, though it’s more a matter of frame of reference - the more wines you’ve tasted, the more likely you are to recognize them. You learn that certain varietals are more easy to distinguish than others: Cabernet Franc with its characteristic bell pepper, Sangiovese with its black cherry. Pinot Noir tends towards strawberries and red fruit, Sauvignon Blanc wherever it’s grown has strong grassy notes, not to mention the common descriptor of feline urine. (Yes, seriously.) Classic Albarino has a lovely brininess from all that Galician sea air.

In the case of our Wednesday tastings here, we have a specific purpose and not really enough time for lengthy descriptions, as I was reminded when I started my first tasting by taking copious notes. We aren’t there to write wine reviews - we’re there to decide if we wanted to buy any of it! There are 8 of us, and 12 wines that we sampled this week; the idea is to taste as thoroughly but also as quickly as possible, with limited verbal notes and a numeric overall score of 1-10. We’re told only the varietal and vintage of each wine, and instructed not to talk (that was a challenge for many of us). After we’ve tasted through them all we go around the table and announce our scores, work out the average for each wine, and are told what it is that we’ve sampled.

Now, this is where it gets fun, especially for somebody new to the group as I am - when you take away all of the associations not only do you learn about the wine in its pure state, but you also get to know your companions’ palates, and are reminded about the subjectivity of wine. For example I was fascinated to learn that Mariana (our lovely tasting room manager) and I have almost identical palates, despite wildly different experiences, and that in many cases our scores were quite different from those of the people across the table. Of course in a situation like this it’s good to have a variety of tastes at the table, but it’s always a thrill to find a matching palate, especially given all of my recent travels, and how far I am from where I originally learned about vino. It might also make building wine club shipments much easier! Knowing my own palate and that of my colleagues is necessary, even if sometimes it only teaches me what NOT to buy. I have to know both myself and my market, and where the differences lie… as I’ve said many times on here, just because I love it doesn’t mean you will. Or more appropriately, in terms of blind tastings: just because I’m fond of a winemaker doesn’t mean that all of his wines are great, especially when they are separated from him; a winery that grew a cult following a decade ago and started getting premium prices doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still worth it after 10 years, a change of ownership, and a new winemaker. Even if the label still looks the same.

That’s what I mean by taking away the associations.

Blind tasting is an interesting exercise, and people often feel differently about it. My friend Pablo, who came to visit me in the tasting room on Wednesday evening, believes that tasting wine without the context of price is unfair - that there is no such thing as good wine, only that which is good for the price. While I think I know where he’s coming from I really cannot agree; in my opinion blind tasting is one of the single best ways to learn about wine, and it really all depends how you’re looking at it. Of course price matters, especially so in this context - I’ll even confess that a couple of my notes the other day ended with “decent - depends on price.” But I’m buying it, and selling it, and there’s so much more to it than that. In any case, there is such satisfaction in tasting a wine, loving it, and then learning that it costs a fraction of what you expected; on the other hand, it’s always educational to sample a wine, hate it, and then learn that it sells for $100 a bottle. These things are necessary, as far as I’m concerned, to keep things in perspective. And also to price things appropriately! Price is a function of the cost of creation, certainly, but also of demand…

Hey, kids, this is one you can even try at home: have a dinner party, and hide the labels. See what happens - just promise to write some of it down, so you can tell me about it.

December 9th, 2007 | vino